Sharon Oosthoek

Industry partnerships: solving big challenges

sgupta — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:43:14 +0000

Industry partnerships: solving big challenges sgupta Wed, 11/27/2013 - 07:43

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IBM contract advisor Perry Fuller says his company's technology incubation lab often calls on U of T engineers for input and support (all photos by Roberta Baker)

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Most people don't go looking for problems, but researchers at the University of Toronto – faculty and students– are the exception to that rule.

On November 21, Ted Sargent, vice-dean of research for the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, stood in front of a room of some 200 industry partners and faculty and asked them for more problems.

Sargent thanked representatives from companies ranging from telecom and software to biotech and sustainable energy for presenting some of their most difficult challenges to faculty and students.

"People from industry bring to us something that is incredibly valuable, which is problems that are important. They are societally relevant, they are important to health and to the environment," said Sargent, who is also a professor in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology.

"When you come to us with problems, we often end up making fundamental discoveries because we go off in directions we wouldn't have otherwise," he added.

Meanwhile, Ken Stevens, manager of collaborative research at Dupont Canada, stressed that his company's research partnerships with U of T engineering have been a two-way street.

“We value collaboration to keep our pipeline of innovation full," said Stevens (pictured right). "I've been impressed by the multidisciplinary aspect of research here. This is where major things happen. It's a wonderful institution and one of the leading research-intensive universities in the world.”

While Stevens spoke of Dupont Canada's long-term relationship with U of T engineering, others such as April Khademi, senior scientist at digital pathology company PathCore, were looking to establish new partnerships. PathCore is a two-year-old company that develops software to help pathologists make better and faster diagnoses.

"We want to give researchers access to our software so they can help us validate and refine it," said Khademi.

IBM contract advisor Perry Fuller said his company's technology incubation lab often calls on U of T engineers to help with the kind of refinement Khademi is looking for.

"We look at products we develop in the lab and ask if they have problems that bright minds at universities could work on. It not only gives faculty a good project, but it allows us to apply their solutions to our products."

Sharon Oosthoek is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto.

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Smarter traffic lights win global recognition for U of T grad

sgupta — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:46:14 +0000

Smarter traffic lights win global recognition for U of T grad sgupta Wed, 11/06/2013 - 05:46

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U of T's Samah El-Tantawy hopes to help implement the award-winning traffic light system she developed for her dissertation (photo courtesy Samah El-Tantawy)

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University of Toronto Engineering graduate Samah El-Tantawy is creating better, smarter traffic lights using game theory and artificial intelligence to teach lights how to adjust to traffic patterns in real time.

"Everyone understands the impact of traffic congestion," said El-Tantawy, who was inspired by watching snarled traffic in Toronto and in her hometown of Cairo, Egypt.

"It affects the environment, the economy and society in general."

Tests of El-Tantawy's system on 60 downtown Toronto intersections at rush hour showed a reduction in delays of up to 40 per cent. The test also showed it cut travel times by as much as 26 per cent.

Existing traffic light systems use sensors embedded in the pavement leading up to the intersection to send data to and from a central management centre. The centre then sends signals back to adjust the lights' timing.

However, El-Tantawy's system processes data on site and in real time, avoiding data transmission delays. It also avoids the system-wide chaos that would result if the central management centre broke down. And while current systems monitor traffic patterns along a single road either east/west or north/south, El-Tantawy's system lets traffic lights use data from all directions. This creates more responsive timing for grid-like transportation networks. It even allows lights to 'talk' to each other to create the optimum traffic flow in a given geographical area.

"Each intersection engages in collaboration (or "game", in game theory terminology) with all the adjacent intersections in its neighbourhood where each one not only learns the local optimal control policy but also considers the policies of its neighbours and acts accordingly," said El-Tantawy. "In turn, neighbours coordinate with their further neighbours in a cascading network-wide fashion.

"In lay language, the agents act as a team of players cooperating to win a game—much like players in a soccer match, where each player endeavors to score, but at the same time considers the ultimate goal of the entire team which is winning the match."

El-Tantawy worked under the supervision of Professor Baher Abdulhai, director of The Toronto Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre and Testbed, to develop the system, known as MARLIN-ATSC, for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers.

“Samah’s PhD is simply impressive, a role model for all PhD students,” said Abdulhai. “I am certainly proud of her achievements, and I hope my whole team follows suit.”

The system, which costs between $20,000 and $40,000 per intersection to install, has attracted interest from the traffic signal control industry and recently won two prestigious international awards. El-Tantawy took first place in the best PhD dissertation competition from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Intelligent Transportation Systems Society. El-Tantawy, who graduated from U of T in 2012 with a PhD in civil engineering, also won second place from The Institute of Operations Research and Management Sciences' George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award.

El-Tantawy has high praise for her supervisor and credits him with helping her win the awards.

"He has the critical thinking skills that made me think outside of the box," she said. "But he was not only supportive on technical matters; he also encouraged me through his positive energy."

If all goes well, El-Tantawy hopes her next step will be to help implement the technology in the field.

“I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Samah El-Tantawy for being recognized for her innovative PhD dissertation,” said Cristina Amon, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Her development of the smart traffic light control system is an excellent example of the creativity and global leadership of U of T Engineers.”

Sharon Oosthoek is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto.

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Peak garbage:"acute" global problem, experts warn

sgupta — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:26:58 +0000

Peak garbage:"acute" global problem, experts warn sgupta Mon, 11/04/2013 - 04:26

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The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in garbage every month, researchers say (photo above by webzer via Flickr

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Rubbish is being generated faster than other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases, says the University of Toronto's Chris Kennedy.

Plastic clogs the world's oceans and rivers, causing flooding in developing-world cities. Solid-waste management is one of the greatest costs to municipal budgets. And waste reduction efforts in some countries are more than offset by population growth and urbanization in other countries.

Those are just a few of the concerns outlined in a commentary published in the Oct. 30th edition of the journal Nature by the civil engineering professor and colleagues. The researchers warn that 'business-as-usual' projections, based on population growth and gross domestic product (GDP), will generate more than six million tonnes of solid waste a day by 2025.

That's enough to fill a line of garbage trucks 5,000 kilometres long every day.

"This means greater numbers of people having to live in environments that are degraded due to the effects of trash," said Kennedy.

Kennedy wrote the commentary along with lead author Daniel Hoornweg, associate professor of energy systems at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa and Perinaz Bhada-Tata, a solid-waste consultant in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

"Waste doesn't get on the map in terms of threats to our planetary system in the way greenhouse gases and ozone do," said Kennedy.

The problem isn't just the waste itself, he added, but also the energy and resources required to make the products we throw out.

And as he and his co-authors point out, population is the main reason we generate so much waste. In 1900, the world had 220 million urban residents and produced fewer than 300,000 tonnes of solid waste (such as broken household items, ash, food waste and packaging) per day.

By 2000, the 2.9 billion people living in cities were creating more than three million tonnes of solid waste every day.

The researchers also found that some countries generate more waste than others. Japan for example produces roughly one-third less garbage per person than the United States. This is despite the fact they have approximately the same GDP per capita.

The reason, the authors say, is Japan's higher-density living, higher prices for a larger share of imports and cultural norms.

According to Kennedy, we need to act on two fronts – population growth and waste management – if we hope to curb our garbage production.

"Population is the ultimate driver here, and vulnerable, poor people tend to multiply faster," he said. "So anything you can do to help urban poor, to give them more security, health and education, will stop the global population from growing so high."

To better manage wastes, society needs to accelerate the adoption of practices of 'industrial ecology' – developing urban and industrial systems that conserve mass akin to natural ecosystems. A great example is the city of Kawaski in Japan, where firms are linked into an industrial ecosystem.

'Peak trash' – the year when garbage production is expected to reach a maximum – depends on how well we learn to curb our waste.

Kennedy and his co-authors write that richer North American and European cities could see peak trash by 2050 and Asia-Pacific countries by 2075. But they say waste will continue to rise in the fast-growing cities of sub-Saharan Africa.

"The urbanization trajectory of Africa will be the main determinant of the date and intensity of global peak waste," they write."With lower populations, denser, more resource-efficient cities and less consumption (along with higher affluence), the peak could come forward to 2075 and reduce in intensity by more than 25%. This would save around 2.6 million tonnes per day."

Sharon Oosthoek is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

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Hispanic engineers honour Dean Cristina Amon

sgupta — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 14:50:41 +0000

Hispanic engineers honour Dean Cristina Amon sgupta Fri, 10/04/2013 - 10:50

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Professor Cristina Amon will be inducted into the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation Hall of Fame

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The Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) will welcome Professor Cristina Amon, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, into its Hall of Fame on October 4.

“The University community is delighted to see Dean Cristina Amon honoured again,” said David Naylor, President of the University of Toronto. “She has fostered research excellence, championed educational enhancements, and accelerated innovation at the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. And as this latest award indicates, she is also an inspiring role model.”

Dean Amon will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the HENAAC conference in New Orleans, during a ceremony that will also honour other top engineers and scientists within the Hispanic community for various technical and professional achievements.

The annual honour recognizes a member who has achieved a level of excellence that opens doors to advances in science, technology, engineering and math, and opens minds about the contributions of Hispanics in these fields.

Great Minds in STEM established the Hall of Fame to recognize its most accomplished winners. Dean Amon has been named one of America’s most important Hispanics in technology on two previous occasions.

Previous inductees include Louis Martin-Vega, Dean of Engineering at North Carolina State University, Adalio Sanchez, General Manager of IBM's System x server unit and John Tracy, chief technology officer of The Boeing Company and senior vice president of Engineering, Operations & Technology.

Since her appointment in 2006, Dean Amon has provided strategic and visionary leadership to one of the world’s most distinguished Engineering schools.

A pioneer in the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints, Dean Amon continues her research at the University of Toronto in nanoscale thermal transport in semiconductors, energy systems and bioengineered devices.

She received her Mechanical Engineering diploma from Simón Bolívar University and continued her education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned her MS and ScD degrees.

Dean Amon has been inducted into four academies, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Spanish Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Canada and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

She has also received numerous awards, including the ASME Gustus Larson Memorial Award, ASEE Westinghouse Medal and the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. Most recently, she was recognized as one of Canada's most Influential Women in 2012 and was honoured with the Society of Women Engineers' (SWE) highest honour, the 2011 SWE Achievement Award, for her outstanding contributions to engineering over more than 20 years. She was also the recipient of the prestigious YWCA Toronto Woman of Distinction award, which recognizes her achievement in improving the lives of girls and women in science and engineering.

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Investors back U of T spinoff with more than $2 million

sgupta — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:59:30 +0000

Investors back U of T spinoff with more than $2 million sgupta Tue, 09/17/2013 - 11:59

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Rakesh Nayyar, co-founder of ChipCare Corp

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One of Canada's largest healthcare angel investments

A University of Toronto spinoff company poised to radically improve HIV treatment in the developing world has landed one of the largest angel investments in Canadian health care.

ChipCare Corporation, co-founded by University of Toronto PhD candidate in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, James Dou, is slated to receive $2.05 million. The funding, from government and private investors, will allow ChipCare Corp. to refine its handheld tester for monitoring infection-fighting white blood cells.

The financing evolved through a uniquely collaborative funding model among Canadian social angel investors, including Maple Leaf Angels, MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto (Connaught Fund), with special financing leadership from Grand Challenges Canada and the Government of Canada.

"The impact on in-the-field HIV diagnostics alone could be revolutionary; this financing is critical to our commercialization roadmap," says Dou, ChipCare's chief technology officer.

Dou developed the device with his PhD supervisor, Professor Stewart Aitchison of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

About the size of a grocery store scanner, it gives blood test results on the spot and within minutes.

The tester allows healthcare providers to monitor levels of a collection of white blood cells called CD4 cells. HIV destroys CD4 cells, leaving patients vulnerable to infection. If the device indicates low numbers of these cells, healthcare workers can administer antiretroviral drugs. Bringing the device to the patient means those affected by HIV don’t have to travel long distances for assessment.

With joint funding from the federal government and Toronto-based private investment group Maple Leaf Angels, ChipCare Corp. will spend the next three years refining the device to reduce its cost and increase its durability.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is at least the second largest healthcare angel investment in Canada's history –and it might well be the largest by the time the project reaches full maturity," says U of T Engineering alumnus Adrian Schauer of Maple Leaf Angels. "The diagnostic potential of this device can hardly be overstated.

"We are investing heavily in its commercialization because we see the potential to revolutionize bedside testing for many conditions, from HIV and malaria in the developing world, to sepsis, heart disease and cancers here at home.”

The federal government funding – announced Sept. 16 – is being channeled through Grand Challenges Canada, which funds innovators in low- and middle-income countries and Canada, and through MaRS Innovation.

“It’s been very rewarding to see a project move from the lab to a real world application,” says Aitchison.

With the help of U of T’s Innovations and Partnerships Office (IPO) and Rotman School of Management, Dou, Aitchison and biological testing expert Rakesh Nayyar created the start-up company, ChipCare Corp.

Sharon Oosthoek is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

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Forging friendships, fostering innovation

sgupta — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:18:58 +0000

Forging friendships, fostering innovation sgupta Fri, 09/21/2012 - 07:18

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International exchange students gather at Engineering's Welcome Breakfast (photo by Scott Mann)

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Brazilian student Raphael de Abreu Alves e Silva’s priority during his upcoming year at U of T Engineering is to make friends. As the affable 25-year-old explained, engineering is about innovation and the best innovation is often a result of collaboration.

“At U of T, you see other cultures. And when you have more cultures, it’s better,” he said. “You can take the best of everyone’s approach. There’s not just one way to do things.” De Abreu Alves e Silva – one of about 40 international exchange students attending a Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering welcome breakfast on September 18 at the Galbraith Building – is a control and automation engineering student at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo.

He is taking electrical engineering and business courses at U of T this academic year, thanks to the Brazilian government’s Science Without Borders program. The four-year program, launched in 2012, aims to send 100,000 Brazilian university students to study at top universities around the world.

This year, 700 students have come to Canada, with 129 choosing U of T, and the vast majority of those studying in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“You have chosen a fantastic Faculty. We consistently place at number one in Canada,” U of T Engineering Dean Cristina Amon told the students in her welcoming remarks at the breakfast. “And we have a very strong position internationally. But what is most important is the ability we have to recruit you – students who are among the best and brightest in the world.”

Indeed, the Faculty is educating and developing global leaders, including those taking part in U of T's international exchange program. U of T partners with 130 universities around the world, swapping students for various lengths of time.

“It gives them the confidence they can compete in the world and gives them a network of peers to potentially collaborate with,” said Miranda Cheng, Director for the Centre for International Experience. “They become our ambassadors when they go home.”

Speaking at the welcome breakfast, Swedish environmental engineering exchange student Sara Eriksson, said she chose to spend a semester here exploring chemical and mechanical engineering after reading rave reviews from other Lund University exchange students about their time at U of T.

The 22-year-old is still uncertain what she’ll do when she graduates in 2014, but she’s sure studying in a globally-recognized engineering program will give her an advantage no matter what she decides.

“I’ve heard so many good things about U of T Engineering. It has a good reputation around the world,” she said.

For 21-year-old Michael Thorn, a biomedical engineering student at Marquette University in Wisconsin, USA, the initial draw was U of T Engineering’s status as a world-class engineering university.

“I also looked over professors’ areas of expertise and research projects,” said Thorn, who will spend part of his term working with an engineering professor on the design for a medical device. Like Eriksson, Thorn has yet to decide on a career path but expects the interdisciplinary nature of study in the Faculty will help him narrow down options.

Meanwhile, de Abreu Alves e Silva said when he graduates in 2015, he is keen to continue in academia, getting his MA and PhD and perhaps becoming a professor or researcher himself.

“Here is a good place to do research,” he said, smiling as he looked around the room at his fellow international students.

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Picking stocks, avoiding lineups, creating a friendlier commute

sgupta — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:13:17 +0000

Picking stocks, avoiding lineups, creating a friendlier commute sgupta Thu, 04/12/2012 - 08:13

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Electrical and computing engineering students explain their projects (Photo by Shireen Cuthbert)

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Engineering students imagine a better world

Strolling through this year’s Electrical & Computer Engineering Capstone Design Showcase, it’s hard not to think, “Hey, there really is an app for that.” But you might just as easily discover there is also an algorithm for that.

The best fourth-year projects – as judged by the ECE faculty – included apps for lonely GO Train commuters and shoppers eager to escape lineups by paying via smartphone before leaving the store. The showcase, which featured just 15 of a possible 100 projects, also featured algorithms to speed the process of bioengineering microRNA for treating genetic disease, as well as algorithms to predict the stock market, using 250 million daily tweets.

“These projects tend to be very well executed or use technologies that are interesting, or not straightforward,” said Phil Anderson, Senior Lecturer in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Computer & Electrical Engineering. “In other years, several have gone on to get patents.”

Certainly, Sumanth Ravipati (CompE 1T2) and Thisal De Silva (CompE 1T2) would like to see their GO Train commuter app become so popular that they might one day charge for it. Right now, anyone can download it for free at Apple’s App Store.

Their inspiration comes from the newspaper t.o.night, whose popular “Shout Out” feature posts commuters’ complaints, questions and requests.

“Every day you see the same faces on the train, but nobody talks to each other. They prefer hiding behind shout outs, “ said De Silva. “So we thought why not put it on a platform and let them reply in real time, so they don’t have to wait a day.”

The app also allows for private chats between commuters, but only works when you’re actually on the train. “That way, you look forward to the commute,” said Ravipati.

Alex Litoiu (CompE 1T2) and his project partner Mike Del Balso (ElecE 1T2) are also harnessing social media, but with a different goal in mind. Their system for analyzing global patterns of emotion on Twitter predicts whether stocks will go up or down.

The pair’s algorithm analyzes tweets from around the world for a list of words other researchers have correlated to emotions.

Litoiu and Del Balso tested their system over a period of three months. They discovered they could predict with 57% accuracy – on average – whether a given stock in the NASDAQ Stock Market would go up or down 24 hours after analyzing the previous day’s tweets.

“So for a certain stock, we might have 100% accuracy, for others 30%. When we average those numbers across all stocks we are doing much better than random,” said Litoiu.

Judging from the crowds around their display, and the constant stream of questions, they aren’t the only ones intrigued by their algorithm’s potential.

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Researchers are 'Up In the Air'

sgupta — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:38:43 +0000

Researchers are 'Up In the Air' sgupta Wed, 09/28/2011 - 04:38

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Professor David Zingg, director of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). (Photo by John Hryniuk)

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U of T engineers are making the wild blue yonder a lot greener

Demand for air travel is projected to rise roughly 5 per cent a year, a figure that is never far from the minds of University of Toronto engineers working to reduce the industry’s environmental impact.

Currently, air travel is responsible for 5 per cent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. But the industry’s goal is a 50 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, says Professor David Zingg, director of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) and a Canada Research Chair in Computational Aerodynamics and Environmentally Friendly Aircraft Design.

“That means we need to take into account the growth in air travel. So not just a 50 per cent reduction per passenger kilometre, but 50 per cent overall,” said Zingg.

To that end, UTIAS engineers are developing and evaluating unconventional plane designs to reduce their drag and weight, both of which cause a plane to use more fuel. Use less fuel, produce fewer emissions.

UTIAS engineers are also designing the most efficient engines for combusting fuels – including biofuels, which promise to lower emissions even further.

Currently, there are some demonstration flights in which one engine is partially powered using biofuel, but Zingg says it will be several years before such technology is commercially viable.

Why combustion physics matter

That’s why UTIAS' associate director, Professor Ömer Gülder, is studying high altitude combustion not only of biofuels, but also of hydrocarbon fuels. He wants to better understand the physics of combustion so we can reduce emissions and increase energy output for both types of fuels.

“Combustion produces 85 per cent of the world’s energy usage, so any improvement in using these fuels will be beneficial,” he said.“There are still basic gaps in our knowledge even though we’ve been using conventional hydrocarbon fuels for 150 years.”

The research is particularly tricky because the stakes are much higher up in the air, where atmospheric pressure and temperatures are extreme.

“If worse comes to worst, a truck stops on a highway. When you are flying, if that happens, it’s not desirable,” said Gülder.

How not to obsolesce an entire airplane fleet

While the bulk of work at the University of Toronto in this field happens at UTIAS, engineers in other engineering departments are also influencing the aerospace industry’s sustainability.

Mechanical and industrial engineering professor Murray Thomson, for example, is collaborating with European colleagues in a program called ALFA-BIRD (Alternative Fuels and Biofuels for Aircraft Development) to research biofuel combustion in jet engines.

Thomson runs super-computer simulations to uncover the type of emissions biofuels give off and how well they work when blended with conventional jet fuel.

“The thing about aviation fuels is you have to be able to put them in an existing engine and know it will work. You can’t modify the engine,”said Thomson. “Airplanes are around for a long time – 30 years or more. You can’t obsolete the entire fleet. Airplanes are too valuable.”

This story first appeared in SKULE Matters.

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